The Cardinals-Cubs Rivalry: A Statistical Analysis

Rivalries have always played a huge role in sports, and we all know the fun in rooting against a team we hate.

In the past, rivals have been compared in a number of ways, from who has the best current team to who has won the most championships to who has the best fans.

We at SeatGeek thought it would be interesting to compare rivals based on transactions on the secondary ticket market, which we have found to be a great judge of fan sentiment.

Three weeks ago, we looked at the Mets-Phillies rivalry, and earlier this week we looked at the Giants-Dodgers rivalry. Today, we will be looking at the rivalry between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs.

The first graph shows the average transaction price per month for February through July. The ticket price data is based on the date transacted, not which game the tickets are for, meaning that if a ticket is bought in February for a game in July, the data is part of February’s average.

• Average Cubs ticket prices are greater than Cardinals ticket prices every month, even though the Cardinals have an 11.5-game lead over the Cubs. This could largely be due to the Cubs playing in Chicago, the third largest city in the United States.
• Once the season started in April, the Cubs' highest month coincided with the Cardinals' lowest month, May.

We also thought it would be interesting to track the ticket price changes as a percentage change over time—with February as our base month.

This allows us to compare consumer sentiment fluctuations across different teams on the same scale.

For a simpler example, let's look at two teams: Team A and Team B. In February, Team A’s tickets are $5 and Team B’s tickets are $30. In June, Team A’s tickets are $10 and Team B’s tickets are $20. That means Team A experienced a 100 percent increase in ticket prices and Team B experienced a 33.3 percent decrease in ticket prices. Therefore:

• Cardinals tickets purchased in July are 18 percent below the price of tickets transacted in February.
• Cubs tickets purchased in July are 24 percent below the price of tickets transacted in February.
• Excluding May, Cardinals and Cubs ticket prices follow a very similar trend.

We will keep you updated. We plan on updating these plots monthly, in addition to looking at other rivalries. Stay tuned.

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